Rick Ross, who dropped his latest album, Richer Than I Ever Been, spoke to HotNewHipHop in a wide-ranging interview.
During the chat, Ross reflected on the loss of Nipsey Hussle and Young Dolph and compared it to the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie. âLosing Nipsey and Dolph for this generation, Iâm sure, was just as equivalent or greater to what [Notorious] B.I.G. or âPac was for my generation,â Ross, who tried to sign Nipsey to Maybach Music Group, said.
Hussle was fatally shot outside of Marathon Clothing store in South Los Angeles on March 31, 2019 while Dolph was shot and killed outside of Makedaâs Homemade Butter Cookies in Memphis on November 17, 2021. Biggie and 2Pac were also both fatally shot, with the former dying at the age of 24 and the latter at the age of 25.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ross spoke about curating down his Richer Than I Ever Been from from a daunting 64 songs to a lean 12 tracks long.
The standard edition of the record, which arrived in December last year, is his shortest album since 2010âs Teflon Don. Ross explained that he wanted a clean 12-song record and as a result, thereâs not some of the flashy collaborations that some fans have come to expect from his projects.
âI remembered when I cut it down to 64 [songs], and I was like, âokay, out of these [64], Iâm going to pick twelve,ââ he said. âYou got to understand that I got some of the biggest n***as in the game that I know, but it wasnât about that. Letâs give them this. N***as know we could call up the big homies and blow up a f***** building in the background with Little X as the director. N***as know we could do that. Thatâs easy. I can do that out of my pocket; I donât even need the label for that.
âI could fuckinâ get Spider-Man to come in and do the fucking â,â he said, mimicking Spideyâs web-slinging. âLike, the real [Spider-Man]. Thatâs the homie, but it ainât about that. Letâs go back and sit down with some n***as and do âRapper Estates,â letâs do âThe Pulitzer.ââ The former of those tracks features Benny the Butcher, while âThe Pulitzerâ sees Rozay go over a simple but hard-hitting Timbaland beat. By contrast to some of his flashier releases, which frequently feature a glossy collab with Drake, Richer Than I Ever Been is decidedly stripped-back.
Prior to the arrival of the project, he teased songs with both Drizzy and Lil Baby, but those songs never surfaced. âI got records with the both of them, of course,â he said. âBaby did some dope ass shit. It came down to one of those things where we wanted to keep it short, letâs keep it clean, letâs give it to them just like this. Drake is great, thatâs the homie. Baby is that homie, thatâs the lilâ homie, and they come through, and I appreciate the way they come through for me.â
Ultimately, he said he didnât feel âpressureâ to deliver on the features front, and instead he chose to focus on making the âdopest shitâ possible. âWe could go and get Madonna, Kanye, click over and callâwe could do that, but we need to remind them the fundamentals of what a boss is,â added Rozay.
Read the full interview here.